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Star Wars Prequels

Disneyland's 'Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance' Ride Keeps Breaking Down (sfgate.com) 129

Posted by EditorDavid from the resistance-is-futile dept.
SFGate calls it "the most technologically advanced ride Disney has ever opened." The 18-minute journey involves a secret rebel base, interrogation from the First Order, uncomfortably close brushes with Kylo Ren and a daring rescue mission, and has sophisticated animatronics and a trackless ride system unlike anything else currently in Disneyland.

With all of those moving parts, though, the ride breaks down frequently.

"Rise of the Resistance" can sometimes break down multiple times a day, often for long stretches. The ride already has modifications for minor breaks, like a scene with a Kylo Ren animatronic that has a "b mode" where a broken piece of wall blocks off the malfunctioning Ren and he's shown on a screen instead. A room with cannons that dart out between ride cars has stopped the cannons from moving because they caused so many ride breakdowns.

But still, even with those fixes, larger problems happen. In fact, earlier this week, one Disneyland guest reported getting evacuated from Rise three times in the same day. "I've been on RoR 3 times today and have been evacuated every time," the person posted on Reddit. "Send thoughts and prayers!"
The article also cites data from the theme-park site Thrill Data, which estimates the ride's historical wait time average is 105 minutes — but which can shoot up after breakdowns to two or three hours.

The maximum wait time ever recorded was six hours and six minutes.
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Disneyland's 'Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance' Ride Keeps Breaking Down More

Disneyland's 'Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance' Ride Keeps Breaking Down

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  • Forget that! Send lawyers and lawsuits.

    • Re:"Send thoughts and prayers!" (Score:5, Funny)

      by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Monday June 27, 2022 @12:57AM (#62653314)
      I still, after over 50 years, have ugly flashbacks of "It's a Small World" on loop play for upwards of 2 hours standing in line.
      • I too have those exact same flashbacks about Its a Small World! We got stuck on it for two hours once when I was a kid. Never ever been back to that ride since.

      • Worse still, we got stuck in the middle of "It's a small world" because they stopped it after an earthquake. But they didn't stop the music or the animatronic dancers.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

          Isn't that a ride where you could feasibly get out and leave?

          I wonder if I am at an age where have those kind of stones.

    • ..that one is much worse. Nothing but a copout and a way to attempt to look good without having to lift a finger.

        How about "I'll come to you and do everything I possibly can to help"?

  • The old "Star Tours" was fun (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Monday June 27, 2022 @12:12AM (#62653262) Homepage

    The old "Star Tours" ride was fun, featuring the death star run, and did not break down. I remember it from my first visit to Disneyland back in '88, and the next time I went 20 years later it was still there (closed not very long after), and since it was "old" there were no lines, I did it 3 times in a row.

    • They've updated it quite a bit since then, though i wish they'd return to the trench run. The one in Florida now has Ren stopping the shuttle (with C3PO as the pilot) and basically flying through various parts of RoS. Same ride, different visuals.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GoTeam ( 5042081 )

        The one in Florida now has Ren stopping the shuttle (with C3PO as the pilot) and basically flying through various parts of RoS. Same ride, different visuals.

        Early in 2020 (before covid closings), Disneyland had the same Star Tour. It also went to Exegol to assist in that weird battle (didn't see space horses on my ride).

    • If your Death Star run didn't break things down, then you haven't hit the thermal exhaust port correctly.
    • There are two star tours type rides built into rise of the resistance. At the beginning when you board a shuttle and get captured by the imperials, and latter when you launch an escape pod off the star destroyer. The human acting is probably the best part. You can really throw some stuff into the script like claiming you were ok the shuttle headed to Coruscant for some Transdoshian Ale and had no idea there were resistance fighters on board.

  • Ride is worth it, awesome (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday June 27, 2022 @12:15AM (#62653266)

    Indeed the ride is prone to breaking down (which is why it's better to try to ride it earlier in the day rather than later).

    But the ride is worth it, simply the best theme park ride I've ever been on, even if you were not that into Star Wars it would be impressive... the ride has a number of stages with some cool elements along the way.

    At least as the article and summary noted, there are some b-modes in parts where elements might break down and you see something alternative...

    What I've never managed to figure out even after many rides, is just what about this ride is breaking down so often. I think it may be the vehicles, I think once I read something about the interlinks between ride elements losing communication and thus getting out of sync at times... for a while around opening they were telling people to put phones in airplane mode before they rode, but they've not done that for a long time. it's kind of amazing to be they don't seem to have managed to increase reliability after all this time.

    By the way no other trackless vehicle ride I've ever been on (like Mickey & Minney's Runaway Railway, or Ratatouille) has been nearly as good.

    Disney has a Genie+ option to pay for some rides individually now, Rise of the Resistance is the only ride I would ever pay that extra fee for - but it's a ride I happily will pay that fee, every time I visit just to be sure I can get on without hours in line.

    • The whole idea of Genie+ is ridiculous in the sense that Disney totally sucks if you *don't* pay for it. Disney is not approachable for middle class people. They can scrape together an admission ticket price but they will spend their entire day starving and melting in the sun. Disney should just include Genie+ and raise daily ticket prices enough that they have capacity so that middle-class people know it's not for them. (That includes me)

      Disney thinks that it's so cool to be an "Imagineer" that they

      • Re:Ride is worth it, awesome (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday June 27, 2022 @08:27AM (#62653900) Journal

        Disney parks are basically a bait and switch and if not quite meeting the legal definition there, certainly the worst kind of abusive teaser faire.

        Hey pay this price have fun ridding rides in the park all day! - Oh wait you want to ride more than maybe two things and not stand in like for 9 hours, well then you need to pay this other higher price... That's the game. I realize you and I are in agreement here but I don't think we should give the Mouse a pass here. Its really mean spirited attempt to prey on people who don't know what they are in for and worse - in a lot of cases its taking opportunities for better family options away from small children.

        I agree Disney should either charge enough meet the supply demand curve where they sell out all the genie+ time slots and make that the class of service for everything they give every entrant, or be a lot more honest about the fact that base admission ticket buys you about 15min of total entertainment and a commitment of 6-9 hours of being a captive audience for them to market over priced middling quality snack food products to.

        • fast past used to be free at disney when other had paided ones.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DrXym ( 126579 )
            Exactly and it was a cool system that set their parks apart from the likes of Universal / Seaworld where the money grubbing fuckers would charge a small fortune for express passes. I remember taking my kids into Disney and on more than a few occasions the wait was too long but we'd grab a timeslot at the kiosk and come back later. It's a fair system everyone could avail of.

        • Disney parks are basically a bait and switch and if not quite meeting the legal definition there, certainly the worst kind of abusive teaser faire.

          And they will continue to do that as long as fools are willing to pay the price.

        • I don't think Disney is bait and switch, but haters are always going to hate. Honestly, a lot of the stuff like this that Disney does is because Universal did it first, nobody bitched, so Disney not doing it meant that they were leaving money on the table willingly that Universal was getting. Universal has for many years now offered 2 different add on passes to a day's visit where for one exorbitant additional price on top of admission you can go to the front of the line once on almost every ride they ha

          • And there's an even higher additional pass you can buy per day that lets you cut to the front of the line as many times as you want for everything except some Harry Potter stuff.

            The key to this is to stay at Portofino Bay [universalorlando.com] or one of the other hotels with the Universal Express Unlimited benefit, and then everybody staying with you gets the benefit as part of the hotel cost. I put my family of 5 in one room, and the stay was very cost effective.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

            At Universal in the mid-1980s, the difference was $16 for a regular ticket, or $22 for a skip-the-lines ticket (and parking was $2 for the whole day), and that premium ticket was furthermore good for free admission for the whole year. That was pretty reasonable to have a much better experience. No idea what Disney (or Universal) is charging now.

        • If you're stupid enough to wait in line, then sure, you might not get to much.

          But for years Disney parks have had a ticketed schedule system. Here's how it actually works if you're not a moron:

          You wander the park to plan your day. You briefly stop by the rides you want to go on and you pick up a ticket with a time range of like 15-30 minutes.

          After you collect all your tickets, you put them order by scheduled time and you just bounce from ride to ride, waiting no more than about 30 minutes per ride (and that

        • Disney is a victim of their own success (at least in Orlando, I've never been to any of the other parks)

          I've been to Disney many times when the kid was younger and have many memories of wandering around a near vacant magic kingdom after midnight during "extra magic hours" which were a free benefit of staying in the cheapest Disney hotel which was basically the same price as staying in a non-Disney hotel and dealing with transportation hassles (which I've done too)

          At the right time of day at the right time o

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        I thought Disney's fastpass was a cool system. You got to pick a timeslot and ride an attraction you would otherwise queue for. For guests it meant they got to ride an attraction without waiting in a way that was fair since everyone got a chance to use the system. For Disney it meant load balancing their park and also looking like good guys compared to some of their rivals.

        Since then Disney have clearly decided to turn into assholes introducing a paid fast pass / express lane system. "Hey, it's not enough

    • I went on this as well. I have to disagree with you, though. As you mentioned, I too believe the cars you refer to were also used in the Remy ride in Epcot and are similar to the cars in Toy Story Mania (which has been out for over eight years). I agree that RotR is a much better experience, I'm hard-pressed to think of what is that much different between the trackless cars. What makes the car much more prone to breaking down?

      Perhaps it is related to the multiple levels of the ride?



      Postscript - Ano

      • "I'm hard-pressed to think of what is that much different between the trackless cars. What makes the car much more prone to breaking down"

          Because the ride has to handle the steering of the cars. If a car begins to veer off course, or if it's as little as a malfunctioning sensor designed to detect this problem, then the emergency shutdown is engaged.

          They should've stuck with tracks, and there are good reasons why most dark rides use them.

    • I was there in march and everything in Galaxys Edge was excluded from Genie+. Genie* so not worth it at Disney Hollywood Studios. The only thing keeping the park populated is Galaxys Edge. The rides are great but the only magic in the rest of that park is separating your cash from your wallet. You gotta book Olgas cantina 3mo out and deposit $10. Who does that? This isnt the four seasons. Fortunately there is a single rider line for the Millennium Falcon which is faster than Genie+ on rides they actually le

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Maybe it is too buggy. I will wait for years until it is stable enough! :P

  • Voltage drop (Score:5, Funny)

    by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Monday June 27, 2022 @12:25AM (#62653278) Homepage Journal

    My money is on a voltage drop from too much resistance....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      It's resisting Darth Mouse.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It might be a factor. I was reading that Japan Rail has recently improved the power factor of its high speed trains to reduce the voltage drop on the high voltage overhead lines, which will allow it to run trains more frequently. Perhaps Disney has a similar issue.

  • Disneyland's 'Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance' Ride Keeps Breaking Down

    Maybe it needs less resistance.

  • They just need to reduce the friction (Score:3, Funny)

    by FeltLion ( 1289024 ) on Monday June 27, 2022 @12:37AM (#62653294) Journal
    I mean, there just seems to be too much resistance. Am I right?

  • Too much resistance in "Rise of the Resistance".

  • So, what you want to say is (Score:3)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday June 27, 2022 @01:26AM (#62653338)

    It's a very good representation of how people felt about the movies?

  • 6:06 must have been the time to repair, not the "wait time". I doubt anyone would wait that long for them to fix it. They would go off to do other things, and then come back later when it's working again.

    • "I'm going to be be first in line when they fix it!"

    • If you were stuck in the line, its hard to leave. If you havent ridden it, you probably dont understand why. Once the line goes inside its still 1hr at normal operation. Thats 1hr of winding through set after set.

    • I doubt anyone would wait that long for them to fix it.

      I see you never stood in a line in a Disney park.

    • 6:06 must have been the time to repair, not the "wait time". I doubt anyone would wait that long for them to fix it. They would go off to do other things, and then come back later when it's working again.

      Well, I recall way back in the day with Space mountain. Teenagers would wait several hours in line, go on the ride, get off and get right back in line for another several hour wait.

      Seeing that convinced me that the biggest ride in DisneyLand or World is that slow moving walking tour that ends up in a couple minute ride, then rinse and repeat..

      And I'll bet the kids brag about how long they waited. Waited 5 hours for a ride? That must be the greatest ride in the world!

      • I waited 10 hours for a ride which was just a flat short track through a bunch of obvious plywood sets with Halloween decorations you could buy at the Dollar Tree, and a big ghost thingy dropped down in front of the exit and went BOO in a low volume, scratchy voice. The ghost was yanked back up to the ceiling and it was over. I am legend.

    • I was thinking the opposite. When I went to Disney to experience this ride, we got in line for the park before it the entire park opened in the morning to get a ticket for the ride and it was well over 6 hours later before we could even get in line.

      You can count that two ways. Either they're underreporting wait times by not including how long you want to wait for a time slot, and the average wait is over 6 hours, or you can expect to wait up to 6 hours even if you have a time slot and aren't counting the t

  • six hours and six minutes. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Monday June 27, 2022 @02:29AM (#62653410) Homepage Journal

    What's six hours and six minutes in Parsecs?

    • Slightly over half a Kessel Run.

  • Rollercoasters sure, its an adrenaline buzz. But rides where animatronic puppets pop out and screen visuals that would have been cutting edge on a PC 10 years ago? Sorry, just don't get it.

    • Re:I never "got" these kinds of rides (Score:5, Informative)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Monday June 27, 2022 @04:04AM (#62653508)

      Go look up a PoV recording of the ride. It achieves a pretty incredible level of immersion. It's by far the most elaborate attraction I've ever seen, combining multiple segments with different modes of transport. The trackless segment takes place after you're broken out of prison (on foot) via a hole cut in the wall and has you chased around a Star Destroyer before being loaded into an escape pod where the the vehicle docks into a motion simulator rig. The reason they're having so many issues with breakdowns is that it's so long and elaborate, there are so many potential points of failure.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

        The biggest take away from this is Disney figured out the formula for suckering people into waiting hours in line for six minutes of entertainment.

        • This is the thing I fundamentally don't get about these parks. I went to disneyland once as a kid and had a good enough time, but there was nothing there worth waiting so long in line for when at a normal park you could have ridden two or three roller coasters in time you spent waiting. Meanwhile, the tech is there today to just schedule riders. And if someone misses their slot, they don't get it. So you'll still need an area for people to loiter in, but a much smaller one — and meanwhile people can b

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Guspaz ( 556486 )

            Disney has experimented with virtual queueing systems (scheduling riders) for years. They've had difficulty with the execution. I visited World when FastPass+ was the system in place, and it was hard enough to get a schedule slot in the app that it almost felt more like a lottery. Disney would very much rather that you didn't have to wait in line, because you're more likely to buy stuff when you're not in line.

    • Some of that happens in the two portions that are similar to the star tourseffects. Its a bit more extreme than the 4D and 5D theaters and those can make it feel like you actually are on a rollercoaster.

    • Sorry, just don't get it.

      Good to know. Are there any other things you don't get that you'd like to get off your chest?

      People who feel the need to tell the world what they don't get; Sorry, just don't get it :-)

      As someone with a long history in community theatre (lighting/sound/set design) and a strong interest in engineering I find Disney dark rides a fascinating art form. I'd love to have the opportunity to design one.

      Oh, and there are a huge number of things people enjoy that make no sense to me, but I don't post to the Internet

  • The Time Masheen in Costco keeps breaking down too. Luckily, there's a Starbucks next door when they give really good "lattes."

  • Was our first ride of the day too. We sat for 45 min in line about at the halfway point to loading. Some people left the line, most all stayed and waited it out. We figured it it was something really bad they would have cleared the lines.

  • "A room with cannons that dart out between ride cars has stopped the cannons from moving because they caused so many ride breakdowns."

    Sounds like the saftey mechanism was working as it should, stopping the ride when the system detected that the cannons were about to smash into the ride cars. So this appears to be a sync issue between the cars and the cannons, much like when the timing chain breaks on an interference engine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

  • AKA news for man-children.

  • I have heard a rumor repeated a few times that the problem with one of the Rise rides, between the two parks, is that one of them has the antenna used to guide the ride is installed upside down in the floor. I THINK it was the one in Orlando. Supposedly, it uses similar tech to a wireless fence for dogs or guidance for robot lawn mowers, but obviously a bit more refined. Anyone else come across this?

    • Dog fence tech doesn't have an up and down side, it's just a cable ("boundary wire") around 16 or 18ga with a radio signal on it and the distance can be estimated by signal strength. Or in this case, using a comparator (or drastically more likely, equivalent-but-more-complicated logic) and two receiving antennas you can center on it.

      I have no idea what they're using, but if it's the same tech as that, then that's not a thing.

  • I'm old enough to remember more than one Disney ride killing its riders or employees?

    Let's see there was the Matterhorn [thrillnetwork.com], Thunder Mountain [disneydining.com], and my Favorite, America Sings. [opinionfront.com]

    If they're not dead they're just inconvenienced for waiting an hour plus in line for no fun; it's not like they're leaving the park in a body bag.

  • If it uses wireless transmissions? (Score:3)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Monday June 27, 2022 @01:10PM (#62654712) Journal

    I would suspect the entire technology is just not appropriate for the situation?

    I remember, one time, working with my boss on a project to get wireless Internet going in a large convention center's mail exhibit hall for our staff and select groups of performers to use the next week when the show started. On a Sunday, we were able to get excellent wifi coverage of the whole place by dropping in a whole box of wireless access points with wired Ethernet connections back to a switch that had a wired connection going in to it.

    Come Monday morning? It was a disaster. Nobody could connect to the thing successfully, or at least stay connected for more than 30 seconds.

    When you had that many people pour into the convention center to see the shows and exhibits, and pretty much every one of them had a cellphone in their pocket? Most of those were searching for wifi SSIDs they could connect to, and probably often using one of who knows how many others that got set up by other parties involved in the expo. It was just a storm of overcrowded wireless frequencies that made everything an unusable mess in there.

    I don't know what frequencies Disney uses to sync everything up on the ride? But given the limited number of frequencies the FCC even allows for these tasks to begin with? I wouldn't be surprised if it works on one of them that's at least close enough to ones getting used by all the devices people carry around so it gets interference? Who knows if their antennas even pick up the signals consistently as the ride moves along, with big chunks of metal rolling past and other big parts of things moving in or out? Any of it could potentially block the signal or cause unexpected signal reflections?

    I can't even walk around my whole house without finding certain "dead spots" where my home wireless doesn't penetrate well.

  • Disneyland's 'Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance' Ride Keeps Breaking Down

    Much like the creativiry of writing in the sequels!

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